


a few notes on foxfire

by subnivean



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Asian-American Character, Character Study, Food, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 17:58:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1657343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subnivean/pseuds/subnivean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>- she once heard herself described as, “some kind of Asian,” by a classmate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a few notes on foxfire

**Author's Note:**

> to the best of my knowledge this fic requires no warnings. it does reference ww2 events, including certain discriminatory policies, and it does reference the complex relationship between japan and korea. there's also a mention of fetishism. if you have any concerns please let me know and i'll do my best to address them and/or add relevant warnings.

****  
  
\- her parents marry in Japan and she is born there, but not raised. In New York her friends’ parents are polylingual and wonder why she doesn’t know Japanese. “I know my name,” she tells them, and writes the characters down with careful concentration. _Akira_. Her kanji means ‘bright’.  
  
\- when she’s sick her dad mixes raw egg with soy sauce in a bowl and heaps in just-cooked steaming-hot rice and stirs it all together and tops it with minced green onion and it’s _so good,_ it doesn’t hurt her throat even a little bit, she could just cry.  
  
\- there’s another Akira in her class when she’s eight only he’s a boy and she hates him, doesn’t want to be like him. He follows her around and tries to make her play games with him even when she pushes him away. He says they have to be friends because they have the same name, so she changes her name.  
  
\- her mom used to call her Akira-chan. Her mom never calls her Kira-chan.  
  
\- afterschool snacks are sliced fruit and veggies, senbei, o-chazuke sometimes if she’s really hungry, or sugar-free cereal. At her friends’ houses they eat crackers and cheese, which is _okay_ , but too much cheese gives her a stomach ache. No one else’s dad cooks and prepares every meal and snack, and Kira asks about it once. “Do you really want your mom to try anything in the kitchen?” her dad answers, and Kira bites her lip remembering past disasters.  
  
\- “You have the right to choose your own name,” her dad tells her, hand combing through her hair. Kira’s mom is so quietly upset, which in turn upsets Kira. “It belongs to you.” Kira closes her eyes and lets herself believe him.  
  
\- she doesn’t understand what it means that her dad is Korean and her mom is Japanese for a very long time.  
  
\- she once heard herself described as, “some kind of Asian,” by a classmate.  
  
\- when she’s very little her dad has her help fan the rice for their sushi. Her mom stealth-snapped a wealth of photos. When Kira is slightly older she doesn’t want to hang out in the kitchen getting her arm sore, and her dad doesn’t make her. She’s sixteen before she decides it’d be a good skill to learn exactly how her dad prepares the rice and the fillings, unless she wants to end up like her mom in the kitchen.  
  
\- there are Asian fetishists everywhere. She clues into it fast and stops wearing her hair in pigtails, brings street clothes to change into as soon as class lets out because New York private school uniforms bring the creepy-weird attention. She’s _very_ glad when her parents tell her she’ll be going to public school once they move to California.  
  
\- her dad teaches history, so she thinks she knows what went on during World War II. Countries fought and bad stuff happened. Germany is very sorry for the Holocaust, America is moderately apologetic for the atomic bombs. _It ended the war, though_ , is the rationale. It’s a strange feeling to be both American and Japanese.  
  
\- she reads about the Japanese-American internment camps and frowns, staring at the black and white photographs. There are living people who remember what it was like to live in one of those. George Takei and Michio Kaku. It must have been so strange, to have your country be so hostile to you.  
  
\- her dad makes all their food but it’s not until she’s fourteen that she ever has kimchee or bibimbap.  
  
\- it’s not until she’s sixteen that she learns what “comfort woman” means, and Soshi-kaimei.  
  
\- it’s a strange feeling to be both Japanese and Korean.  
  
\- when she’s sad, her mom will share bags of mugi-choco. When she has a headache, her dad will make her cups of mugi-cha.  
  
\- she never asks them how hard it was for them in Japan, and if they ever hide certain things in America. Her parents love each other and love her. _That_ is important.  
  
\- the one dish her mom can make is instant curry. Even so, she skips a lot of steps and sometimes burns the meat.  
  
\- it’s confusing, confusing, to be Korean and Japanese and American.  
  
\- when she is twelve she and her dad spend a day making furikake from scratch. They eat it on just-cooked rice with a drizzle of soy sauce. “Delicious,” her mom declares.  
  
\- summertime is for yaki-onigiri and chilled soumen, new year’s is for microwaved mochi rolled in soy sauce and wrapped in nori, and in the fall they eat miso so thick it may as well be stew.  
  
\- neither of her parents will discuss their families. _You_ , they say, _are our family now._  
  
\- she looks at herself in the mirror, takes photographs of herself, to see, where it is that she’s like her mom, where it is she’s like her dad.  
  
\- the older she gets the more aware she is of the history on her back.  
  
\- it never gets lighter. But every year she is stronger.  
  
\- Kira, she renamed herself. Her kanji means _bright_.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> kira means a lot to me.


End file.
